In This World - 2002

  In February 2002 in the Shamshatoo Refugee Camp in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, there are 53,000 refugees living in sub-human conditions since 1979 with the Soviet Union invasion and 2001 with the USA bombing and invasion of Afghanistan. The family of the Afghan Enayat and his cousin Jamal decides to send them illegally to London to have a better life. They hire coyotes to smuggle the cousins through Iran and Turkey to Italy and finally London hidden inside trucks and containers. However, the long journey locked in a container with other families poses a terrible challenge to the boys.

However, the long journey locked in a container with other families separates the cousins and on 09 August 2002, Jamal has his asylum application refused in London.

As Winterbottom points out, we spent $7.9 billion bombing the Taliban regime. The question remains - how much do we owe those whose lives were ruined as a result?

In This World is a 2002 British docudrama directed by Michael Winterbottom. The film follows two young Afghan refugees, Jamal Udin Torabi and Enayatullah, as they leave a refugee camp in Pakistan for a better life in London. Since their journey is illegal, it is fraught with danger, and they must use back-channels, bribes, and smugglers to achieve their goal. The film won the Golden Bear prize at the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival.



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Plot

Jamal and Enayatullah are Afghan refugees in a camp in Peshawar, Pakistan. They travel to Quetta, and thence toTaftan on the Iranian border. They pay people smugglers to assist them over the border; on their first attempt they are stopped by Iranian police and returned to Pakistan, but their second attempt is successful. They travel to Tehran and then to Maku, in the Kurdish part of Iran, from where they cross a mountain range on foot to Turkey. In Istanbul they meet a group of other migrants, and they are taken to Italy inside a shipping container. The container is not ventilated, and most of the refugees, including Enayatullah, are suffocated to death. Jamal survives and lives in Italy for a time. He then steals a woman's purse and buys a rail ticket to Paris. From there, he goes to the Sangatte asylum seekerscamp and with a new friend, Yusef, he crosses the channel by stowing away on a lorry. Finally, he arrives in London, where he calls his uncle to say he has arrived but that Enyatullah is "not in this world". The film ends with images of the Peshawar refugees.

Production and style

The film is shot in a documentary style but it is in fact a drama performed by non-professional actors and with improvised dialogue. The actors are mostly playing fictionalised versions of themselves; for example, Jamal is a real Afghan refugee and the Iranian policeman who deports the two refugees back to Pakistan is played by a real policeman who is re-enacting his normal work for the camera. Enayatullah was a market trader whom the filmmakers cast because they thought him "a nice guy". The production team lied to authorities in several countries in order to secure filming rights, having met government resistance in Iran and Pakistan. Most of the film was shot on location, but the scenes inside the Sangatte camp were actually filmed in England, as the film crew received hostility from the French inhabitants of the nearby village.

Distribution

The film was released in the UK in March 2003 by the BBC after festival screenings in 2002. It was released in the United States in a limited number of cities in September 2003 by Lions Gate as part of the short-lived Sundance Film Series partnership experiment with Loews Cineplex Entertainment. The film did not make much money, but was highly regarded by the critics that were able to see it.

Aftermath

In a case of life imitating art, after returning to Pakistan, Jamal Udin Torabi made the journey to London in reality and applied for asylum. He is now living with a family in South East London, although he was only granted leave to remain in the UK until his eighteenth birthday. Enayatullah used the money he earned on the film to buy a truck, and now runs an import-export business between Kabul and Peshawar.